Seacom and Interoute have signed an agreement, which will see the connection of the African fibre network provider’s 17,000 kilometre intercontinental submarine fibre optic network cable to Interoute’

s pan-European fibre optic network.

This will provide East Africa with access to major business centres globally, and support the growing demand for broadband. The new subsea cable will radically change the economics of high capacity bandwidth for the East African telecoms industry, enabling businesses to get more capacity for less cost, and at a higher quality.

SEACOM’s new fibre optic cable will run along the east coast of Africa, creating a digital super highway that links South Africa, Mozambique, Tanzania and Kenya with Europe and South Asia. The cable will extend to Marseilles, where it will connect to Interoute’

s network providing a speed of light route to Europe, North America and the Middle East. The new subsea cable is scheduled for service in June 2009, and will offer 1.28 Tera-Bits Per Second of capacity, the equivalent of streaming approximately 1,600,000 simultaneous YouTube videos.

Says Gareth Williams, CEO Interoute: “

Interoute is proud to support SEACOM and the growing African market with high speed, high capacity connectivity. This project provides the vital last link for SEACOM in connecting East Africa to Europe and onto the rest of the world. When this cable goes live we are expecting to see a huge increase in the amount of content flowing between these two continents and I believe this cable will provide a crucial link in supporting economic growth in the region for many years to come.

Brian Herlihy, CEO SEACOM said: “SEACOM’s agreement with Interoute enables the realization of connecting Africa to the global fibre optic networks. While SEACOM is the first cable to connect East Africa to today’s global network, it alone cannot provide the interconnection required to deliver our customers world class services. Our agreement with Interoute and its partners extends SEACOM’s capability to interconnect customers in Africa to not only anywhere in Europe but to anywhere in the world.”